Pringle Takes Persistence, Controversy to the Capitol

Seven months ago, Curt Pringle was in the drapery business, a part-time politico with faint hopes of one day becoming a full-time politician. Today he is working himself into the fabric of the Legislature.

The transformation began in June with the death of Assemblyman Richard E. Longshore (R-Santa Ana) the day after the primary election, in which he had won the right to seek reelection in the 72nd Assembly District under the GOP banner. Pringle, a 29-year-old resident of Garden Grove, was chosen to replace Longshore on the November ballot and, after a bitterly fought general election battle, emerged with an 867-vote margin to win the seat.

Now Pringle, who was sworn into office Dec. 5, must wage a second campaign, this one to win the respect and cooperation of his Assembly colleagues and the continued support of his new constituents.

A veteran Republican activist despite his youth, Pringle seems to be taking the transition in stride.

His early comments on his first-term expectations have been low-key--typical for a man who, if not for the death of Longshore, would still be on the outside of the political world looking in.

A victim of the annual Capitol office shuffle, Pringle is currently a man without a suite. His Sacramento staff is working in borrowed space in the Capitol office of Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra). But Pringle says he will gladly accept “whatever-sized closet” the Assembly leadership assigns to him in the next few weeks.

Aware that many first-term lawmakers naively introduce a spate of bills that go nowhere, Pringle says he expects to keep his legislative load to a minimum while concentrating on helping his central Orange County constituents solve their problems with the state bureaucracy.

But despite this modest public persona, the boyish, bespectacled Pringle, who likes to call himself a “compassionate conservative,” already has demonstrated that he is no political pushover.

Many in the Republican hierarchy were skeptical about his ability to win an Assembly race after losing three tries for a seat on the Garden Grove City Council.

But Pringle easily captured the nomination by skillfully working the telephone to line up votes on the Republican Central Committee, which by law chose the candidate to replace Longshore on the ballot.

Then he ran a no-holds-barred campaign against Democrat Christian F. (Rick) Thierbach, who many thought would win the seat. Pringle portrayed Thierbach, an Anaheim school board member and Riverside County prosecutor, as a liberal carpetbagger. During the campaign, Pringle boasted that he had never lived more than a mile and a half from Disneyland.

The already divisive contest became a center of controversy on Election Day when the county Republican Party, at the request of Pringle’s campaign manager, hired uniformed security guards to keep tabs on Latino voters going to the polls. Pringle has said the guards were hired after several reports that non-citizens might try to vote in large numbers.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), who was designated by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) to aid Thierbach in the race against Pringle, said ill will over the incident may hamstring Pringle in his first days in the Assembly.

“A lot of things in the Legislature you take on representation or faith in the person carrying the bill or making the comment,” Katz said. “That’s a respect earned by colleagues. Pringle has a little further to go than the average freshman because he has to overcome what his campaign did.

“As candidates, we are all responsible for what’s done in our name. Curt Pringle is no exception. He is the one ultimately responsible for the use of those guards. Yet he has failed to denounce those tactics.”

For his part, Pringle said, he is weary of the controversy--which, he added, has kept him from celebrating his victory. He insists the guards were hired out of a legitimate concern over potential voter fraud and were given instructions that fell within legal and ethical bounds. As soon as complaints arose, the guards were removed from their posts, he maintains.

“It is important for me to move on to do the job I was elected to do,” Pringle said. “We need to look beyond that incident and not make it the focal point.”

Yet Pringle himself may keep the issue alive if he follows through with plans to introduce legislation that would toughen election laws and provide stiffer penalties for anyone who knowingly registers a non-citizen to vote. He also wants to prohibit people from returning absentee ballots other than their own to the registrar, a practice he believes can contribute to voter fraud.

Pringle’s aggressive posture on the issue does not surprise Orange County lawmakers who knew him as a hard-working and likable Republican activist and now are coming to respect him as a politician.

“He has this disarming look, like he’s on his way to Sunday school, but he is very strong, very opinionated and quite ready to express his opinions,” said Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach). “He looks like a kid, but he’s really more politically astute than he sounds or looks.”

Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim) said Pringle’s campaign convinced Orange County leaders that “he’s a young man who knows what he’s doing.”

“I think . . . he’s going to impress the members of the Assembly in the same fashion,” Royce said.

Pringle said that, in addition to the voter fraud bill, he plans to introduce legislation to stiffen penalties for drug pushers on their first convictions. He also wants to make it easier for mobile-home owners to join together in associations to buy their parks.

But Pringle said his primary focus will be on constituent services--the less glamorous and often neglected part of a legislator’s job.

“We have three field representatives and one office manager in the district, and the focus is for them to do the case work necessary to assist the people of this district,” he said.

Such an approach can be a balancing act for conservative Republicans, because many constituents’ problems center on their inability to obtain the very government benefits that conservatives are in favor of cutting. But Pringle said he sees no conflict in being a fiscal conservative while also pushing to help his constituents receive whatever benefits they may deserve.

“There is a role for government in assisting those people who can’t take care of themselves,” he said. “It is very important that we do respond to people who have problems, who come from a portion of our community in need.”